What is the currently best Desktop Search software?

[J-Mac]

I upgraded recently to their 2009 version and started a new database fresh, so I had to tag them all again.

-J-Mac (February 10, 2009, 05:04 PM)

Doesn't ACDSee let you save your tags into EXIF or IPTC, so that they never need to be re-entered (even if you switched over to a competing product)?

-CWuestefeld (February 10, 2009, 05:18 PM)

Yes, but not necessarily their tags. I do have specific keywords saved in the IPTC data but the database optimization feature of my previous version of ACDSee went haywire and garbled everything - and their support is, well, not very supportive. That actually sent me looking hard for an alternative, but there really isn't anything else out there that compares IMO.

Jim

[Dormouse]

Yeah, I don't know how professional photographers deal with all their photos.  Especially when they come back with hundreds of photos per session.  I'm sure someone has figured out a way of doing it.  I don't have that many photos, but if I did, I would almost have to use some kind of tagging system that had thumbnails in the cache so I can see a group of pictures very quickly.

-superboyac (February 10, 2009, 12:56 PM)

Aperture, Lightroom, iView, idImager, iMatch

Using the program to view, discard, rate and tag. Some pros claim to process each photo in a matter of seconds. And some people use some of these progs for tweaking the photos.

[J-Mac]

Yeah, I don't know how professional photographers deal with all their photos.  Especially when they come back with hundreds of photos per session.  I'm sure someone has figured out a way of doing it.  I don't have that many photos, but if I did, I would almost have to use some kind of tagging system that had thumbnails in the cache so I can see a group of pictures very quickly.

-superboyac (February 10, 2009, 12:56 PM)

Aperture, Lightroom, iView, idImager, iMatch

Using the program to view, discard, rate and tag. Some pros claim to process each photo in a matter of seconds. And some people use some of these progs for tweaking the photos.

-Dormouse (February 10, 2009, 06:23 PM)

I should have clarified my comment better: I purchased ACDSee Photo Manager 2009 for under $35.00 (upgrade price).

Aperture:  $199  + For Macs (I use Windows)

Lightroom:    $299

iView:  No longer available. Purchased by Microsoft and replaced with Microsoft Expression Media 2: $199

IDimager:  $129 (Pro), $69 (Personal)

iMatch:  $64.95

I think I did OK with my upgrade.

Thanks!

Jim

[qforce]

It looked fairly interesting until I read the hardware requirements section...

-qforce (February 10, 2009, 10:51 AM)

Hardware requirements

    * CPU: the absolute minimum is a Pentium II at 400 MHz, a Pentium III at 1 GHz or better is recommended.
    * main memory: minimally 128 MB, 256 MB is recommended.
    * disk space requirements: 100 MB + 2 MB per 1000 scanned items.

They don't seem that bad to me...

-Darwin (February 10, 2009, 11:37 AM)

100 MB of disk space for the program itself? This looks more like an office suite with built-in desktop search, if you ask me...
And 128 MB RAM is already half of what my Eclipse IDE (a very hungry beast) usually needs.

[aenache36]

100 MB of disk space for the program itself? This looks more like an office suite with built-in desktop search, if you ask me...

-qforce (February 11, 2009, 07:21 AM)

Greetings.

That is the size of the index file and not the program itself. Autofocus.exe(ver. 5.0 for MSWin) has 44,6KB...
Regarding RAM, as much as I could see is that Java is the hungry beast...

Best regards.

[qforce]

100 MB of disk space for the program itself? This looks more like an office suite with built-in desktop search, if you ask me...

-qforce (February 11, 2009, 07:21 AM)

Greetings.

That is the size of the index file and not the program itself. Autofocus.exe(ver. 5.0 for MSWin) has 44,6KB...
Regarding RAM, as much as I could see is that Java is the hungry beast...

Best regards.

-aenache36 (February 11, 2009, 07:48 AM)

The DocFetcher.exe is 41,5 KB, but that doesn't mean anything, it's just a launcher. You really have to add up everything that is installed on the machine, and according to the website of Autofocus this sums up to 100 MB.

And what do you mean by "100 MB for the index file"? Maybe I'm missing something here, but the way I see it, if a file isn't the result of indexing, then it's part of the base installation (i.e. the program), right?

[Darwin]

100 MB of disk space for the program itself? This looks more like an office suite with built-in desktop search, if you ask me...
And 128 MB RAM is already half of what my Eclipse IDE (a very hungry beast) usually needs.

-qforce (February 11, 2009, 07:21 AM)

We're coming at this from very different perspectives: I have a 320GB harddrive and 4GB of RAM. The effect of this being installed on my computer would be minimal - like a flea on an elephant  Most computers purchased in the past three years have at least 512MB (and more like 1GB) of RAM factory installed and probably more than 80GB harddrive capacity, so...

[aenache36]

The DocFetcher.exe is 41,5 KB, but that doesn't mean anything, it's just a launcher. You really have to add up everything that is installed on the machine, and according to the website of Autofocus this sums up to 100 MB.

And what do you mean by "100 MB for the index file"? Maybe I'm missing something here, but the way I see it, if a file isn't the result of indexing, then it's part of the base installation (i.e. the program), right?

-qforce (February 11, 2009, 08:44 AM)

C:\Program Files\Aduna -> 90MB
C:\Documents and Settings\UserName\Application Data\Aduna\AutoFocus 5 -> 366MB(this is where index files are maintained/stored)

As for RAM, that depends heavily on the usage: the smarter you build the query the smaller the RAM used and also the number of files resulted from an interrogation: 38.000 files displayed(all .html from all my sources) increased the RAM usage with 60MB...can start with 30MB and use as much as 100+MB.

HTH

[qforce]

100 MB of disk space for the program itself? This looks more like an office suite with built-in desktop search, if you ask me...
And 128 MB RAM is already half of what my Eclipse IDE (a very hungry beast) usually needs.

-qforce (February 11, 2009, 07:21 AM)

We're coming at this from very different perspectives: I have a 320GB harddrive and 4GB of RAM. The effect of this being installed on my computer would be minimal - like a flea on an elephant  Most computers purchased in the past three years have at least 512MB (and more like 1GB) of RAM factory installed and probably more than 80GB harddrive capacity, so...

-Darwin (February 11, 2009, 08:51 AM)

Well, I didn't mean to stop anybody from using this program. If you think you have enough system resources to run this thing in the background permanently, that's okay with me. All I said was that the hardware requirements seemed a bit much for a desktop search program (e.g. Google Desktop's setup file was something like 2 MB, if I remember correctly), and it's certainly too much for my laptop here, which has 1 GB of RAM, minus 40% of that for the OS and the web browser, and when I fire up my IDE or a virtual desktop (Windows XP running inside a Linux machine  ), there's not much left for a desktop search program of that magnitude.

[qforce]

C:\Program Files\Aduna -> 90MB
C:\Documents and Settings\UserName\Application Data\Aduna\AutoFocus 5 -> 366MB(this is where index files are maintained/stored)

As for RAM, that depends heavily on the usage: the smarter you build the query the smaller the RAM used and also the number of files resulted from an interrogation: 38.000 files displayed(all .html from all my sources) increased the RAM usage with 60MB...can start with 30MB and use as much as 100+MB.

HTH

-aenache36 (February 11, 2009, 09:21 AM)

Their RAM requirements seem to be very similar to that of DocFetcher.
However, I really wonder why they need so much disk space (are you sure there's no hidden office suite in it? ).

[J-Mac]

When I ran Google Desktop Search it built a separate index folder that eventually grew to over 6 GB!! As it indexed it keeps adding to index but never deleted anything. I haven't run it for a couple of years so I don’t know if they have changed their policy of not removing deleted files from their index. But if you have a lot of data on your computer - as I do - then any indexing search engine will create a very large index file.

Jim

[nosh]

When I ran Google Desktop Search it built a separate index folder that eventually grew to over 6 GB!! As it indexed it keeps adding to index but never deleted anything. I haven't run it for a couple of years so I don’t know if they have changed their policy of not removing deleted files from their index.

-J-Mac (February 11, 2009, 01:06 PM)

I installed GDS an hour back coz I'm looking for something to index my Firefox cache. It does have an option to remove deleted files from the index so index size going out of control shouldn't be a problem now.

I didn't like it though, for several reasons:
It's not very customizable.
It's one of those annoying apps that goes ahead and does what it pleases coz the users are idiots who don't know any better - despite my selecting to index only the browsing history I noticed it had gone ahead and indexed other stuff anyway.
It has one of the clunkiest, most fcuked up interface I've seen on any app... right from the unconventional installer, to the settings pages that open in a browser, to a mandatory widgets module being installed, to the main executable trying to call home _after_ I had uninstalled it, the whole GDS experience was really bizarre and infuriating!

[J-Mac]

When I ran Google Desktop Search it built a separate index folder that eventually grew to over 6 GB!! As it indexed it keeps adding to index but never deleted anything. I haven't run it for a couple of years so I don’t know if they have changed their policy of not removing deleted files from their index.

-J-Mac (February 11, 2009, 01:06 PM)

I installed GDS an hour back coz I'm looking for something to index my Firefox cache. It does have an option to remove deleted files from the index so index size going out of control shouldn't be a problem now.

I didn't like it though, for several reasons:
It's not very customizable.
It's one of those annoying apps that goes ahead and does what it pleases coz the users are idiots who don't know any better - despite my selecting to index only the browsing history I noticed it had gone ahead and indexed other stuff anyway.
It has one of the clunkiest, most fcuked up interface I've seen on any app... right from the unconventional installer, to the settings pages that open in a browser, to a mandatory widgets module being installed, to the main executable trying to call home _after_ I had uninstalled it, the whole GDS experience was really bizarre and infuriating!

-nosh (February 28, 2009, 12:08 PM)

I know that a lot of people swear by Google, and after all they do offer some nice applications "free" of charge - if you don't count the cost of ads appearing on everything and your data being exposed as it is - but this is typical of a Google application. They do it their way and they do not offer a way to request or suggest anything different.

Jim

[Darwin]

I know that a lot of people swear by Google

-J-Mac (February 28, 2009, 02:35 PM)

Literally!

It has one of the clunkiest, most fcuked up interface I've seen on any app... right from the unconventional installer, to the settings pages that open in a browser, to a mandatory widgets module being installed, to the main executable trying to call home _after_ I had uninstalled it, the whole GDS experience was really bizarre and infuriating!

-nosh (February 28, 2009, 12:08 PM)

 

[nosh]

Sadly, it was also the only DTS app that did a (somewhat) decent job of letting me search the FF cache. Everything else failed spectacularly. I un/installed it thrice yesterday before I quit in frustration. Now that I've had a night's sleep I've convinced myself to give it one last try and see if I can work around its idio(t)syncrasies, somebody shoot me!

[Darwin]

Sadly, it was also the only DTS app that did a (somewhat) decent job of letting me search the FF cache. Everything else failed spectacularly. I un/installed it thrice yesterday before I quit in frustration. Now that I've had a night's sleep I've convinced myself to give it one last try and see if I can work around its idio(t)syncrasies, somebody shoot me!

-nosh (March 01, 2009, 02:46 AM)

[tinjaw]

25 pages!?! Ugh.

I have been using Locate32 on all my computers. I have also been using Search GT on my XP boxes for those times when I just installed some software and haven't reindexed yet and I need to find a file. However, since Search GT isn't working on Vista yet, I need to use something else.

What can I use to do realtime index-less NTFS searches in Vista?

[yksyks]

Everything, what else? Don't be afraid of the latest beta, it's quite stable.

[redstarnyc]

I use Everything.  Its simple to use, fast and runs on a usb key.

[rjbull]

What can I use to do realtime index-less NTFS searches in Vista?

-tinjaw (March 04, 2009, 10:25 AM)

Does Nir Sofer's SearchMyFiles work on Vista?

[Steven Avery]

Hi Folks,

Limiting it to the file and folder name searching, and to freeware.  The last months I have used the slow Total Commander search recently and will return to one of these programs. 

For this generally we will want programs that are not Lite versions of Pro, although in some cases the Pro may be extra features like Network drive (Ava Find) support -- so that understandably is extra.

Some of these may (e.g. Astrogrep, Locate32) search inside or give the actual matches inside or may even emphasize search-and-replace. And I am not including some heavyweights (e.g  Google Desktop, Copernic, Lookout) that are primarily designed for x-ray search and have lots of ink above.

There are about 20 major features and platforms to consider, so that is not addressed here. Note that FreewareGenius has done a good job on reviews.

FARR has a Locate32 plugin and probably fits in here somewhere as well.

Gizmo's discussion.
http://www.techsuppo...nt-discussions.htm-1

The following should help someone who might want to do a fuller comparision.
It looks like leaders are:

======================================================

Everything - Voidtools (David Carpenter) - NTFS only - fan favorite, excellent - no forum, good FAQ
http://www.voidtools.com/
FreewareGenius review
http://www.freewareg...ram-for-ntfs-drives/

SearchMyFiles - Nir Sofer - Nir does excellent software - new 02/2009 - no forum
http://www.nirsoft.n...search_my_files.html

Extra Search Free - Crave Worldwide - India - nice interface, active development
http://www.craveworl...com/extrasearch.html
Forum
http://www.craveworl...=posts&m=585#585

Locate32 - Janne Huttunen - Source Code C++
http://locate32.webhop.org/
Forum
http://locate32.webhop.org/

Astrogrep - Open Source - last release 09/2007 - shows lines (programmer oriented)
http://astrogrep.sou...rge.net/screenshots/
Forums
http://sourceforge.n....php?forum_id=184597

DK Finder - Denes Kellner (Hungary) - reasonably active - await DKF3 - no forum
http://www.dkellner.hu/freeware/finder/
Freeware Genuis review 08/2008
http://www.freewareg...desktop-file-search/

Index Your Files -  J. Rafael Castro Imbernon (Spain) - LastUpdate 12/2007 - No forum
http://www.indexyourfiles.com/

Super Finder XT - FreeSoftLand - Donationware
http://fsl.sytes.net/ssearch.html
Screens
http://fsl.sytes.net/ssearch3.html
Forum
http://fsl.sytes.net/forum/

Seeker - Veign (Chris Hanscom SC, USA) - no forum, blog, link to DC
http://www.veign.com...cation.php?appid=104

ScanFS - Saleen Software - related FilePro and Synchronizer freeware
http://www.saleensof...ware.com/ScanFS.aspx
Forum
http://www.saleensof...ware.com/ScanFS.aspx

Filehand Search 3.0 - (NH, USA) now free, Professional-Enterprise versions in process. Good review pg. 1 for light full search.
http://www.filehand.com/

StopKa - Vitali Yemialyanchyk - (Belarus) - no forum (p. 22 - dubious)
http://www.stopka.us/en/screenshots.html

XSearch - EaseXP - no forum
http://www.easexp.com/xsearch/

================================================

Agent Ransack - Mythicsoft (Oxford, England) - lite version of FileLocator Pro - no forum
http://www.mythicsof...ro&page=features

Ava Find - "Think Less Do More Software" - free version of Ava Find Professional - no forum
http://www2.think-le...do-more.com/avafind/

Exalead Desktop - (France w USA) Free version of Professional - Enterprise emphasis - no forum
http://www.exalead.c...ucts/desktop-search/
Discussed around pg. 6-7 as full-blown indexing tool.

=====================

http://www.winhelpon...rty-search-tool.html
How to replace Windows XP Start menu Search with a third-party search tool
(work with classic now ?)

So those were the 16 I found, the top ones are known to be leaders, yet you may find gems further down.  Feel free to do a 20-point matrix comparision chart in your spare time .

Shalom,
Steven

[J-Mac]

Nice post, Steven!

Jim

[rgdot]

I really like Locate, it just works well in my experience
Thanx for that list Steven, 4 or 5 of them I never heard of, going to try them.

[Carol Haynes]

I have now removed locate and use Everything almost exclusively.

The only problem I have with "Everything" is that it doesn't seem to be able to cope with removing external drives.

I suppose I could tell it not to index external drives but it really needs a way to allow their removal without invalidating the whole catalog for all drives. At the very least it could do with a way of automatically regenerating its index when a drive is removed. The only way I have found to do that is to close the app and restart it - which is clucnky and only ever happens when I go to make a search.

[Steven Avery]

Hi Folks,

  Oh, there is also the genre of search and replace programs, since they are likely to have a find file program as part of their function.

  One seems to fit the above list quite well, I actually used it a while back.  Even though it was developed years ago, its usage was quite solid and pleasant.

InfoRapid Search and Replace - Ingo Straub (Germany) - Last Update - 2003 - no forum
http://www.inforapid...ml/searchreplace.htm
Free for non-commercial use

  On top of the 17 freebies (any missed of significance ?) you have:

File Managers

  Perhaps a few of those are fast and strong, I mentioned Total Commander is slow, Xyplorer might be fast.  One of the reasons for this summary was that for most of us the file managers will be chosen on other criteria.  However if a few are truly top-notch on "find files" it would be worth a note. Personally I would be more likely to switch to that file manager. 

Next:

Search and Replace programs, Disk Catalog programs (often designed for CD's) Dup File Finders and File Compare programs and general file utility programs.

   None that I have seen (usually just the screenshot and short discussion) so far seem have the clarity of the search programs, where the issue is simply finding all instances of a file name .. fast.  (And perhaps doing basic functions on the file .. viewing, executing, etc.) 

Except.. mentioned above p.12

BareGrep (free w/startup splash screen) & BareGrepPro - Bare Metal Software (Australia) 2006 last ver-no forum
http://www.baremetal...m/baregrep/index.php

DocFetcher - Open Source - Freeware (p. 18 in thread and lots of good discussion with Qforce)
http://docfetcher.so...net/screenshots.html
Forums
http://sourceforge.n....php?forum_id=702423

AutoFocus - (Netherlands) Open Source - Freeware
http://www.aduna-sof...ofocus/overview.view

rexCrawler - Todd Boyd - free for personal use - no forum (p.21 in thread)
http://sites.google.com/site/rexcrawler/

That can be #18 & 19 & 20 & 21 for freeware-file-name-find consideration.

  And as mentioned in the intro, the heavy-weights multi-function desktop searches are a different puppy. Since they tend to be overkill for the simple function.

  And any rate these are major freeware full-desktop-search programs.  Not the programs like Archivarius and the direct X1 and dtSearch ($200)

Copernic Desktop Search Home (Free, Professional $50 per license) - no forum
http://www.copernic....arch/home/index.html
Compare Versions
http://www.copernic....rch/cds-compare.html

Yahoo Desktop Search (X1)
http://pro.x1.com/?source=Yahoo
Forum
http://forums.x1.com/viewforum.php?f=27

Google Desktop Search
http://desktop.google.com/
Forum
http://www.googlecom...ty.com/forum-33.html

Ask Jeeves (browser-style) - No Forum
http://sp.ask.com/en...sktop/overview.shtml

Microsoft Windows Search 4.0
http://www.microsoft...psearch/default.mspx
Forum
http://social.msdn.m...psearchhelp/threads/
Windows Search 4.0 & Windows Desktop Search 3.01 downloads & updates (Add-ons)
http://beqiraj.com/w...ows/search/index.asp

   Users could indicate whether they are too bulky for the simple tasks, or maybe one or two are totally competent. 

Well, while we are here, some of the paid version best-by-test. 
And for X1 the free version will be acceptable to many.

X1 Professional Client - $50 - 30-day trial then restricted version, probably ok for many
(PST Archive discussion above p.3 - PST = Outlook )  Is X1 Limited == Yahoo X1. Identical ?
http://www.x1.com/products/xds.html
Forums
http://forums.x1.com/
Blog
http://blog.x1.com/

Archivarius 3000 - Likasoft - $40 - no forum
http://www.likasoft.com/

dtSearch - 30-day evaluation $200
http://www.dtsearch.com/
Yahoogroups - (also one for developers, one for news)
http://tech.groups.y...;sec=group&slk=1
Page 10 and later -- discussion.

  The next mention is a few of the paid search tools that might be worth a look for some even for the simpler searches. And you can find a few above where there are both professional versions and freeware versions.

Master Find - Rose City Software - shareware - $15 - no forum
http://www.rosecitys...ware.com/MasterFind/

Search GT - Isatech - shareware - $20 - no forum (discussion starts p.11)
http://www.search-gt.com/index.html

FindOnClick - 2BrightSparks - shareware - $30 for group of utilities (p.15 favorable post for full search and response)
http://www.2brightsp...com/onclick/foc.html

LookDisk 2.95 - Vincenzo Iuorno - Singapore (2006 freeware)
http://www.fxsearch.com/ldw_eng/
LookDisk - Iconico - Shareware $30 - ver 4.2
http://www.iconico.c.../LookDisk/index.aspx
Forum
http://www.iconico.c...geList.aspx?forum=33

Sowsoft - Effective File Search - 30-day trial version - $30
http://www.sowsoft.com/search.htm
Instand Document Search - $30
http://www.sowsoft.c.../document-search.htm

File Search Assistant - Aks-labs - $70
http://www.aks-labs....sa_home/download.htm
Forum
http://www.aks-labs....B2/viewforum.php?f=4
Disk Search Assistant -Aks-Labs $40 (not on main site)
http://www.disk-search.com/

Desktop Find Professional (Italy) $80 - $125 - no forum
http://www.finddesktop.com/

PowerGrep - JG Soft (Just Great Software - Thailand) $150 - 15-day trial - no forum
http://www.powergrep.com/

Now we go into Enterprise-land.  Note this first one has a free version.

SearchInform Desktop (Free, Standard $49, Professional $200)
http://www.searchinf...hinform-desktop.html

ISys Search Software - Desktop 9 - 14-day trial, price undisclosed, resellers, enterprise
http://www.isys-sear...ysdesktop/index.html
Forums
http://forums.isys-search.com/phpbb2/

Gaviri Digital Home SearchOS - $40 (NJ - USA) also Professional, Enterprise, OEM - no forum
http://www.gaviri.co...network-searchos.php

Some more might be findable from the Goebel Group articles (they sell a Google gadget, some database tools, etc).

Desktop Search Tools Matrix
http://www.goebelgro...om/desktopmatrix.htm
Search Appliance Matrix
http://www.goebelgroup.com/sam.htm
Compare Microsoft Live Search Products
http://www.goebelgro...search_portfolio.htm

And there might be more in the 25-pages above.
Ok, now all skimmed, a few additions made.

And another interesting read with an auxiliary product to Microsoft search.

Evaluation of desktop search applications - Michael Lowe
http://www.kalio.inf...p_Search_Comparison/
Visual Desktop Search - freeware
http://www.kalio.inf...sual_Desktop_Search/   

Shalom,
Steven Avery